By determining that BIS & TZF are only going to look at “mainly fusion based propulsion”, they are failing to take into account other recent work and the potential of likely advances such as nanotechnology. This would be fine if the other methods were to receive equal expert attention otherwise. But it seems self-evident that if the BIS & TZF are focusing on Project Icarus, it is likely that they will say that they are, therefore, unable to do equal work on other promising approaches due to the lack of any more expertise.

Other promising recent proposals include: SailBeam, sun diver, solar sailing, magnetic sailing, maser & laser beams, particle beams, a nanoprobe, etc, and longer duration missions.

Some of these, such as a sun diver mission, could be launched at a fraction of the cost of Project Icarus and so might be compatible with near-term space budgets. In other words, a less massive mission might actually be more financially and, therefore, politically viable and hence, might actually be launched before a Project Icarus. A Project Icarus would probably have to consume all of NASA’s human flight budget for decades and so is incompatible with the colonization of the solar system and so would, by necessity, be delayed at least towards the end of this century at the earliest. By then, nanotechnology and a lunar-based infrastructure might make a nanoprobe far less costly and therefore negate any work done on Project Icarus.

So, I would like to make a simple suggestion. Before the BIS & TZF commits to tying up its expertise again on a fusion-only approach, make sure, one way or another, that there is some sort of setting whereby competing ideas have a fair shot of getting equal expert attention.

Thanks,